Meet the Oldest Woman in the World: She Overcame the COVID-19 Pandemic, Spanish Flu, and World Wars

We are all aware of how Guinness World Records consistently unearths the most astounding accomplishments, occurrences, or abilities. They’ve done it once more, however. This time, Guinness World Records wished the oldest surviving person in the world a happy 117th birthday on Instagram.

In celebration of being 117 years old, Maria Branyas Morera entered her name into the Guinness World Records (GWR) database. She was born in 1907 and is now the oldest surviving survivor of the Spanish Flu pandemic, the COVID-19 epidemic, World War I, and World War II.

Guinness World Records wished Maria Branyas Morera a happy birthday on Instagram, posting, “Today marks Maria Branyas Morera’s 117th birthday. Happy birthday, Maria.” In January 2023, it was confirmed that she was the oldest person in the world. Maria was born in San Francisco, California, on March 4, 1907, but she and her family moved back to Spain when she was eight years old in order to reside in Catalonia.

Since then, she has made the area her home and has spent the last 23 years residing in the same nursing facility. Guinness World Records said in the post’s comments section that she surpassed 118-year-old Lucile Randon of France in January 2023 to become the oldest person on Earth.

“She is very grateful for all the congratulations received and the interest that so many people have shown in her state of health,” Maria’s nursing home director, Eva Carrera Boix, told GWR. On March 4, Maria had her birthday celebration.

Maria stated she had “very bad memories” of both the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the Spanish Flu epidemic (1918), according to Guinness World Records. “Maria also survived COVID-19 – she contracted the virus a few weeks after turning 113 in 2020 but made a full recovery within days, becoming the world’s oldest COVID-19 survivor,” Guinness World Records said, more than a century after the 1918 epidemic.

Since it was posted on Instagram eighteen hours ago, the post has received around 1.9 lakh likes, and the count keeps rising. Many comments have been left by internet users on the post. “She made it through two world wars,” one Instagram user said. Another person said, “She has a better understanding of how the world is than any of us; she lived through two world wars and two pandemics.” A third said, “May God bless her and give her more energy and health.”